I met Susan during the darkest period of her life. She was only 27, but her dreams and life plans had been hijacked by RA when she was 21. It was a puzzle why a disease that usually manifests in women aged 40-50 would attack someone so young. It had forced her to drop out of graduate nursing school, break off her engagement to her boyfriend of seven years, and perhaps worst of all for someone in their twenties, move back to her parents’ house and relinquish her independence.

Susan refused to accept the reality of her prognosis, even as her family was comparing wheelchairs and making plans to modify the house to make her life easier. A life that had seemed endless in its potential, when she and friends went on a one week trip to the mountains of central Mexico, a twenty-first birthday present from her parents.

Susan got sick the last day of the trip with what appeared to be a gastrointestinal parasite, a common ailment referred to by the locals as Montezuma’s Revenge. It mostly consists of diarrhea, nausea, and a strong sense of shame. But not for Susan. Montezuma’s symptoms went away, but two weeks later she got her first RA symptoms: 70-80 hard nodules all over body, painful swollen joints, skin rashes, and fever. Those symptoms disappeared after a few weeks, only to return six months later much, much worse. A biopsy of a finger joint pointed to RA. She was stunned when the doctor told her it was caused by the virus she contracted in Mexico.

Susan has always been athletic and competitive. She played tennis and loved rollerblading. But RA robbed her of all that. She said, “It seemed like one minute I was running along the beach, and the next I had trouble crossing a room.” Her rheumatologist told her she had one of the worst cases of RA on record, with nearly all her joints affected.

Note: Click on the YouTube tab at the top to see Susan today. She’s the skater. See if you can find any evidence that she still has one of the worst cases of RA on record. Nutrition is what keeps her disease under control. If you would like to purchase Monavie Active, contact Susan at www.mymonavie.com/backes.

By the time Susan’s sister introduced us, she had tried just about everything to control the disease. She was told by doctors that it would continue to progress, and that these measures would only slow that progression.

Background: What follows is a partial overview of Susan’s prescription drug usage, before supplement therapy. During the six years before we met, Sue tried a number of prescription drugs, and suffered grievously from many of their side effects. Tylenol, an over the counter painkiller for her never ending joint pain, up to 20 a day. Its side effects include constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, excitability, headache, loss of appetite, nausea, trouble sleeping, vomiting, and bodily weakness, among others. Piroxicam, a mild, then prescription, anti-inflammatory drug said to lessen pain and inflammation. Its side effects include constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, gas, headache, heartburn, nausea, severe allergic reactions, trouble breathing, chest pain and tightness, and swelling of the mouth, face, lips or tongue, among others. Celebrex, an NSAID, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug thought to relieve pain and reduce inflammation. Its side effects include increased bruising, heart problems, ringing in the ears, gastric ulcers and stomach bleeding, and liver and kidney damage. Prednisone, a corticosteroid used to fight inflammation, pain, and joint damage, with side effects that include easy bruising, thinning of bones leading to easy breaks, cataracts, bloating and weight gain, a rounding of the face, and diabetes. Because it is so damaging, doctors usually prescribe it only for acute cases like Susan’s. Methotrexate, originally used in chemotherapy, and Plaquenil, originally used to fight malaria, are part of a disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug set called DMARDs, which are prescribed to slow the progression of RA and lessen damage to joints and connective tissue. Their side effects include liver damage, bone marrow suppression, and severe lung infections.

Enbrel and Remicade, Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Inhibitors. Enbrel is administered through a shot, while Remicade is given by IV. TNFs are inflammatory substances produced by your body. These drugs are prescribed to help reduce pain, morning stiffness, and tender swollen joints. Their side effects include congestive heart failure, blood disorders, lymphoma, increased risk of infection, and injection site irritation.

There is another horrific side effect not listed that Susan experienced with Remicade—temporary paralysis. She received the drug intravenously in her doctor’s office one afternoon, went home and woke up the next morning unable to move from the chest down. She called 911 and was admitted to the hospital for treatment.

Gold. That’s right, from the metal. Three different kinds taken orally and by injection, to do who knows what in her body. Today it is rarely prescribed for RA because it is so toxic, with side effects that include severe stomach cramps, blood in urine, coughing, metallic taste and mouth sores, pain and numbness in hands and feet, shortness of breath, thickening of the tongue, persistent diarrhea, unusual bleeding or bruising, vision problems, and vomiting.

Susan also bravely participated as a subject in a couple of experimental RA drug trials. She has had total joint replacementsurgery, andsurgery to repair tendons. She tried acupuncture and boiling a mixture of herbs to drink. She left no stone unturned. And everything helped a little for a little while, but her disease continued to progress, until it had affected most of her joints, which were being slowly deformed.

The problem with all the drugs listed above is that they do not address the core problem of an immune system gone mad. They are addressing instead the results of the madness. Quiet the immune system and you quiet RA. It’s that simple.

At our first meeting, Sue could barely walk and moved in a kind of waddle, designed to avoid trying to fully rotate her ankles, and take the pressure off her knees and hips. I waited as she took ten minutes to traverse a six-foot hallway in her sister’s house. As we talked, she showed me just how much of her mobility she’d lost. She could raise both arms only a few inches from her waist, maybe 35 degrees. She couldn’t bend her wrists, and had trouble using her fingers; two of them she couldn’t move at all. She was miserable, but she wasn’t going to let RA defeat her. She was looking for a different approach and told me she’d do whatever I told her to.

As a start, I put Sue on supplement therapy designed to address and control her symptoms. Symptoms are important, as they are your body’s request for specific help. “How do I feel?” is an important question to ask yourself, and the more specific you can be the better.

On her own and against my advice, Susan decided to stop all her medications, except Piroxicam and Tylenol, cold turkey. She was particularly anxious to stop the steroids and gold, because they fatigued her, killed her sex drive, bloated her body, gave her face an unnatural round look, and were so dangerous that she spent one day a week in a hospital gown getting her liver and kidney tested for damage from their side effects.

Before supplement therapy, Susan experienced morning stiffness lasting two hours. And this wasn’t, oh-my-legs-are-so-stiff-from-tennis-yesterday stiffness. This was stiffness that keeps you from moving. Meaning, she spent two hours each morning loosening up before she could begin her day. That may not sound like a lot, but that’s 730 hours a year, more than an entire month of her time each year lost to RA stiffness alone. Within two weeks of beginning the natural therapy, she had cut the time to 30 minutes. Today she has zero stiffness in the mornings.

Before supplement therapy, Susan also experienced non-stop pain, difficulty moving around, with some joints actually locked in place and completely immobile, extreme fatigue, and an overall feeling of malaise. After two weeks on the supplement therapy some of her locked joints loosened, and she cut her Tylenol intake in half. After 30 days she had returned to running along the beach, and had no trouble crossing a room.

Susan continued on this therapy, with 99 percent relief from her RA for eleven years, but she had to take two daily doses of nine different supplements, about 80 a day. She didn’t care because they gave her back her life and kept her well. She bought a special backpack to carry the supplements and took them with her no matter where she went, knowing that if she missed even one dose, her symptoms would return in full force and effect.

Comment: What Susan’s Rheumatologist Says About Her Supplement Therapy: Susan started to feel so good while taking the supplements that after six months she stopped going in for her regular appointments with the rheumatologist. She was 99 percent symptom free and had regained nearly all movement in previously effected joints. She was again running five miles a day along the ocean, and she took up rollerblading with a vengeance. She had decreased her Tylenol intake to two tablets, once or twice a week. Susan hadn’t taken any arthritis drugs for a year when I asked her to visit her rheumatologist for a complete work-up. He had not seen her for six months and he was impressed with her recovery, writing in her medical chart: “. . . It is good to see that she has gained marked symptomatic improvement during the interval months as she did not obtain relief with multiple other traditional medications used for rheumatoid arthritis. Perhaps the . . . form of arthritis which she contracted after her illness in Mexico may prove responsive to the current vitamin and food supplement therapy which she is using.”

One happy day Sue discovered Monavie Active, which contains all the nutrition she had been getting in her daily supplements in a delicious tasting juice. She called me raving about it, talking so fast I couldn’t understand her. She told me she’d decided to become a Monavie distributor and had wanted to test the product on her own disease. So with her usual bravado and all or nothing attitude, she stopped taking all her supplements, as she had stopped taking her major meds earlier. She relied solely on Monavie Active to control her RA.

At first she followed the recommended dosage of two ounces of Monavie Active, twice daily, before breakfast and dinner. She still experienced some discomfort the first week, so she added a third dose of two ounces in the afternoon. It took three weeks before all her symptoms disappeared, while relying solely on Monavie Active. But they did disappear, and they have remained gone. In the beginning, Susan stopped taking Monavie Active from time to time, to see what would happen. Each time, within 72 hours she had RA again. But using Monavie Active regularly has enabled her to more or less forget about her disease, because as long as she takes Monavie Active her RA in no way impinges on her life.

I too experimented with Monavie Active. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just wanted to see what would happen. I don’t have RA but I do have allergies, and can tend to itchy eyes and serial sneezing. The first thing I discovered was that Monavie Active worked as well as Bee Pollen at controlling my allergies. Since RA and allergies are both immune based I was spurred to investigate how Monavie Active would work on other auto immune disorders. I found that it works remarkably well on all of them to relieve any symptom. If the health problem is auto immune based, Monavie Active in the correct doses will heal it.

RA ARISES FROM THE OVERREACTIONS OF A NERVOUS AND HYPER SENSITIVE IMMUNE SYSTEM

The virus Susan contracted in Mexico triggered a reaction from her immune system, which handled the symptoms properly, making her feel better. But once triggered by that particular virus, her immune system couldn’t stand down and return to a normal state. Once it had eliminated all the real threats to her body, and while still in a hyper active state, it began to attack its own body, giving Susan RA.

The immune system can be compared to two personality types in humans. There is a type of person who remains calm under pressure, who never raises his voice, who varies his methods as necessary to deal with new crises without getting flustered. He would never lose his cool and do something inappropriate. Let’s call him Andy. We all know someone like this and admire their grace under pressure.

But there is another type of person who gets upset at the slightest thing, who has trouble sleeping, who jumps at every noise, and is always over anxious. Anything can set him off, and he’s known to cry at the slightest frustration or bad news. Let’s call him Bob. We also all know someone like this and usually can’t wait to get away from them, because their anxiety can be draining.

These two personality types can also describe two types of immune systems. Andy represents a stable, healthy one that doesn’t mistake harmless substances as potentially dangerous allergens. When Andy kicks in it is to respond to a real emergency, and he never attacks the body he is supposed to protect. Bob represents a hyper sensitive immune system that has a hair trigger, and will send out t-cells and antihistamines to cause inflammation at the slightest disturbance. Bob’s hand is always hovering over the red “go” button.

Ordinarily, it’s the immune system’s job to protect your body against truly harmful substances, like viruses, pollution, bacteria and subsequent infection. Unfortunately, an over anxious immune system will wrongly react to benign substances and treat them like allergens. When this happens it goes into full lock down and sends out all the troops to fight an imaginary foe, something that isn’t really there. At that point, the system has become disabled, has lost the ability to distinguish healthy body tissue from a threatening antigen enemy.

Susan’s immune system decided to attack her joints, resulting in RA, but it just as easily could have been a different auto immune based disorder like MS, psoriasis, diabetes, lupus, or allergies. There are close to a hundred disorders that stem from problems with the immune system. The end results may be different but the trigger in all of these disorders is the immune system. Fix its problem and you also solve the underling health problem.

Comment: Arthritis Groups: When Susan first started taking the supplements and discovered that they worked so well to control her RA, she was excited to get the news out and help other people with the disease. She found a local support meeting sponsored by one of the major arthritis organizations. There were about 20 people in attendance and two leaders. As soon as we arrived Susan introduced herself to the leaders, gave them a quick summary of her personal triumph, and asked to speak to the group and share her story with them. We were both surprised when the leaders adamantly refused to let us say anything to anyone. They stopped just short of asking us to leave, after we promised not to try to talk to anyone about Susan’s experience. Susan had brought a copy of her medical records in case anyone doubted that she has RA, but that didn’t change their minds. She was disappointed, and after trying a couple of different meetings and running into the same attitude, she gave up using that path to inform others. Shutting out new information is never a good idea, especially when it comes from someone who has walked the walk. Susan felt that if even one person could be helped with her story she wanted to give them that chance. We both realized that the major arthritis organizations are too bureaucratic to accept new information that might help their members. Through this blog, Susan and I are trying again to let people know about a product, Monavie Active, that can help anyone with RA. If Monavie Active doesn’t work on your health problem, maybe it isn’t RA that you have.

Usually, when I recommend Monavie Active I also lay out a supplement therapy that will work as well. I do this because some may find the $150 monthly cost of Monavie Active to be prohibitive. But with RA it takes so many supplements to do the job that the cost difference is negligible. You have to take (1) Bee Pollen, to calm down the immune system so it stops attacking you, (2) Beta Carotene, to stop the inflammation response and neutralize free radicals, (3) Vitamin D3, to support Beta Carotene, (4) Lecithin, to break up the blockages limiting your mobility, (5) L-Cysteine, to clean toxins out of your system, (6) Vitamin C Complex to support L-Cysteine, (7) Vitamin B12, to increase energy levels, (8) B Complex 100, to support B12, and (9) Iron, to fight the anemia common to many with RA. I haven’t done the math but Monavie Active might be cheaper than buying as much of these supplements as needed to shut down RA. And it’s a lot easier.

Controlling Rheumatoid Arthritis QUICK GLANCE CHART

Supplements

Breakfast

Dinner

Brand

Strength

Monavie Active

2 ozs

2 ozs

Monavie

NA

Notes

► You are going to start with two doses of 2 ozs each of Monavie Active daily, like the chart says. Watch your progress. If you feel better after a while but still have symptoms, add a third dose of 2 ozs at lunch. It will take a little while for the RA to shut down completely, but if after three weeks you still have any RA symptoms, increase your dosage to 3 ozs three times daily. After a couple of months, you should be able to remain RA free with just the two daily doses of 2-3 ozs morning and evening. But this is only nutrition, so make sure you take enough to eliminate all of your symptoms. If any remain just up your dosage of Monavie Active as I have described here.

► Monavie Active is a combination of fruit juices and is a very dense liquid. Make sure you shake it well. Be sure to stay well hydrated, to drink water throughout the day when you first start taking it, until your body can get used to processing so much additional nutrition.

► Try to take Monavie Active on a fairly empty stomach, before breakfast, and before dinner. If you need a third dose at lunch, try to take it before you eat. If you can’t do it like this, don’t worry about it.

► Only Monavie Active will work the way I have described here. None of the other Monavie products can do what Active does. Don’t be fooled by the marketing. The other products may have other benefits, but they will not quiet the immune system.

Please be nice to each other, and look for my next blog: Blog 22: Sports Injuries, where I tell you how to cut healing time in half and decrease discomfort during the healing process.

Lynn Capehart Wellness Foundation, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, meaning that any donation you make will be tax deductible. We appreciate your support for our current efforts to establish a Vitamin Scholarship Program, so that we may supply supplements to those who could be cured of their disorders but cannot afford the cost. You may make your donations through www.paypal.com using any credit card or bank anywhere in the world. Donations should be made there to the account of lynncapehartnonprofit@outlook.com Thank you.